Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/60

 Crown, made efforts to find a permanent home for it in this country by interesting himself in a scheme for presenting it to Queen Victoria on her eightieth birthday. However, owing to certain difficulties that occurred in the organization of the subscription list, the project for purchase fell through for the time, and was only taken up again in the early months of 1901, when the late Mr. Charles Davis made strenuous efforts to obtain the suit as a national possession for England, with the result that a subscription list was opened, the project was placed on a sound and patriotic basis, and the suit was purchased and presented to His late Majesty King Edward VII by a number of gentlemen, who, contributing liberally towards the sum required, kept the suit in the country and prevented it from being sold to some continental museum or private collector. The tradition handed down in the Dymock family was that this harness originally came from the Tower of London, and that it was retained by them as the customary fee together with a gold cup, the Champion's legitimate perquisite. This tradition, however, is certainly inaccurate; for in the Court of Claims no mention is made of the armour in which the Champion is clothed, the only perquisite mentioned being the gold cup in which the health of the king is toasted. Another mis-*statement which was made in the catalogue at the time of the sale of the suit at Christie's, was that the suit was worn at the Coronation of King George I. Now it is on record that at the Westminster Hall ceremony Dymock the Champion wore the suit with lions from the Tower (Class II, No. 90), which without doubt is the suit still there (Vol. iii, Fig. 1061). In the middle of the XIXth century Mr. John Hewitt records that the Champion at the Coronation of King George II wore the suit made for Sir John Smithe (then called that of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex), which is in the Tower (Fig. 1119); but we are unable to find his authority for this statement. The record of the Champion's armour worn at the banqueting ceremony of King George III is missing; but on the last occasion on which the Champion ceremony was performed (the Coronation of King George IV) the Dymock of the time was arrayed in a suit of fluted Maximilian armour hired for him for the occasion from a Mr. Gwenap, who had a collection of armour on view about that time in a shop in the Opera Colonnade, Pall Mall. Now if the Hatton suit was actually worn at the coronation of one of the Georgian kings, it must have been at that of King George III. But there are two serious objections to be made to this theory. In the first place, as we have said, the record of the armour worn by the Champion at this particular coronation is lost. In the second place, if the Hatton suit were taken from the Tower and worn on